


Restless Beats and Minor Keys

by basicallymonsters



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Kisses, M/M, Music Nerds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-05
Updated: 2015-08-05
Packaged: 2018-04-13 02:35:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4504377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/basicallymonsters/pseuds/basicallymonsters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil loves it when Dan plays piano, and Dan is enamoured with the way Phil listens. </p>
<p>(or - Dan tries to teach Phil how to play, but they’re more interested in each other)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Restless Beats and Minor Keys

Dan stares at his piano and gnaws his lower lip, antsy hands preoccupied with desk knick knacks and useless tapping. 

He hasn’t played in maybe a month, and now every time his mind wanders away from his laptop, and sunlight bounces off ivory, he feels the strangest clenching guilt. Restless beats march through his mind constantly and he feels, more than ever, like he should be trying harder.

It’s not that he has an obligation to the piano, not when he’s so busy with art that isn’t music and his creativity is being squeezed out of him like a spent dish rag. 

He doesn’t have any real reason to play now, except years of frustrating afternoon lessons and repetition on top of repetition until his mother’s eyes crinkled and she told him it sounded like movie music. 

And of course there’s Phil, who listens to him play without fail, carefully moving through the passage between their rooms like a ghost. If he’s already in the room his movement tumbles to the lightest burble, head almost imperceptibly cocked towards the lilting, stuttering notes.

Phil is certainly his biggest supporter, and Dan feels inexplicably like a band that hasn’t released a new album in a while, Phil’s expectant eyes on him whenever he lingers at the piano or new sheet music comes in the mail.

Dan stands and crosses to the piano, strands of hair falling into his eyes. He fingers the keys lightly, pressing in slowly so they don’t sound, visualizing the mechanism of the gentle drum kissing the string inside the body of the piano.

He inhales sharply when his fingers automatically form a chord and press down properly. C Minor. He always goes for the minor chords, the slow and the messy rather than the calculated and precise and major - too predictable for him. 

(Phil always closes his eyes and smiles when he plays those soft pieces, and Dan can barely focus on the keys)

There is a desperate, noisy part of Dan’s brain that tells him his technique is sand castle crumbling in his head, that his inevitable mistakes will be so loud in the silence of their flat that Phil will slip from the doorway, and he’ll be left with ringing shame and faltering fingers.

He swallows his hesitance and presses another chord into being, crossing his thumb under into an inversion. He smiles, hands working trippingly over his scales, accidentals falling out of place once or twice, patterns working in messy tandem. He feels Phil’s presence after a moment, easily places the change in pressure in his room, the waft of sweet, earthy cologne and the boundless grin he knew instinctively was planted on Phil’s face.

His scale grinds to an awkward halt and he tries to stop his cheeks from burning as he pulls the first sheet music he can find off the lid of the upright. He wonders absently what Phil was doing before he came in, if he ever hesitates for even a second, or if the very first chord had stirred his legs into motion.

He smooths down the pages and wills Phil to stay. His hands shake over the opening positioning, not pressing in yet, listening for an intangible cue in the air - a conductors baton to fall on the perfect breath. 

He comes in hot, with thunderous notes and hammering keys and he almost laughs out loud at his own muscle memory, eyes flitting over the page more out of habit than anything else. He’s giddy, hands moving faster than they need to, Matt Bellamy wailing along in his head. 

He can still feel Phil’s eyes on the back of his head, and he faintly hears him crossing the room to sit at the foot of his bench, one hand ghosting over Dan’s back without settling.

Dan bites at his smile, a couple of stray gummed notes creeping into his erratic rendition of “Apocalypse Please”, but it doesn’t matter because Phil has started to sing along, voice striving for the absurdly high notes and falling a little flat and Dan is beaming down at him, distracted, always distracted by him.

More notes slip out of his grasp, and he knows all the words but he can’t multitask enough to sing, his attention is already half on Phil as it always is, hasn’t quite been fully off of him for years.

The climax of the piece comes and Phil’s properly pressing a hand into the small of his back, pats along to the beat and voice dropping down an octave when it reaches its limits. He laughs, and Dan is so tempted to abandon this song and turn to him.

And this - this is exactly why he missed playing, this is his favourite things all in one place, raw creativity, and safe, easy spontaneity, and Phil. 

They’re both laughing a little when the song peters out, and Dan touches a few unnecessary notes to cap it off, ones he knows will fit, feeling ridiculous as he trills and hops down an arpeggio, right back into silence. 

Only Phil is filling it with scattered applause, standing up so he can slide onto the bench beside him.

They grin at each other, breathless, and Phil touches Dan’s still hand on the keys.

“You should play more.”

Dan shrugs, struggling not to preen.

“Only if you promise not to defile the music like that” he says, and Phil bumps his shoulder with his.

“You loved it. You would buy my album,” he insists.

Dan would, but that’s beside the point.

“Maybe you should develop this burgeoning musical career,” he says fondly, taking Phil’s hand, and splaying his awkward fingers over the keyboard.

“I could teach you. They’d love it.”

He doesn’t have to elaborate on “them”.

“No doubt,” Phil nods, amused, but his fingers tense. 

“Would you…” he clears his throat. “Would you actually teach me?” Phil asks.

His eyes are so wide and blue and hopeful, and Dan can’t even look at them, like direct sunlight.

“I… would. Of course I would. Since when do you want to be a pianist though?” Dan asks, poking at Phil’s ribs.

He squirms away, and Dan watches his ears go pink.

“I dunno. I love instrumental music, and you’re so good at it, and… well. Cheap lessons. Eye candy for a teacher. And I have dextrous fingers, remember,” he wiggles them in dan’s face, and they both crack up when he swats them away.

“Well, we could start here.” Dan takes Phil’s pointer finger and presses it into the centre of the piano.

“This is middle C,” he says, constructing Phil’s uncoordinated fingers into a simple C Major chord.

“This is so high school musical,” Phil murmurs, and Dan barks out a laugh.

“Then you know it’s gotta be legit.”

Phil hums his amusement and plays the C chord a couple more times.

“This sounds good, can we stop here, I haven’t messed up yet.”

Dan shakes his head, sliding Phil’s middle finger up onto a black key.

“Now we’re in minor territory.”

“Your favourite,” Phil says excitedly, playing the chord with gusto.

Dan lets a private little smile colour his face. “You remembered,” he states simply.

“ ‘Course. Always listening to your music babble. Your anything babble to be honest. You’re a babbler.”

Dan raises an eyebrow, and Phil raises one back mockingly, continuing - “whether I’m there or not.”

Dan shoves him.

“Kay, well apparently it’s compelling enough babble for you to remember it months later,” he says pointedly.

“Oh, just barely. So are we having this lesson, or not?” Phil asks, hands splashing on the keys in increasingly disorganized formations.

Dan shrugs, “You’re basically playing jazz, to be fair.”

He watches Phil’s hands flit about the keyboard, and can’t help leaning in, pressing a warm kiss to the hinge of his jaw.

Phil’s hands still immediately, and when he turns shy eyes on Dan, he leans forward again, catching Phil’s lip between his and applying the gentlest pressure, slow and languid on the way out.

Phil leans the sides of their faces together, pressing chaste kisses into Dan’s hairline and breathing him.

“You’re a terrible teacher,” he whispers.

Dan smiles, eyes still closed, hand coming up to cup the other side of Phil’s face.

“My students shouldn’t be this kissable.”

“Ew.”

Dan’s face falls into the crook of his neck to stifle his laughter.

“Maybe we should find you an impartial teacher.”

“Maybe you should be more professional,” Phil sniffs.

“Maybe you should kiss me.”

Phil does, with rolled eyes, and fond, pursed lips. 

Dan plays again that night, perched on the bench in his boxers, Phil’s eyes raking over his bare back.

The only thing he learns is that Dan makes the same face when he plays as he does when he’s filming - and that they play best when they’re on the bench together.


End file.
